The crew traveled out of the Red Sea, entering the beautiful blue Mediterranean. They decided to restock at Athens.
They found great hubbub at the port of Athens.
The porters said, Did you hear? Socrates is going on trial today.
And so the crew attended Socrates’ trial. The Athenian court claimed Socrates was a gadfly and used his interrogations, which went absolutely nowhere, as a surreptitious means to undermine society’s order. And now, the court proclaimed, let the gadfly speak for himself.
The gadfly’s peers and the crew stared at the portal, shrouded in darkness. They waited. And waited. And still no gadfly.
When Andy and Gary inquired, the gadfly responded his throat was hoarse. He said all this, while dabbing his brow and his pug nose of sweat, such that the napkin swelled many times its size.
As Gary had played God, it was Andy’s turn to play Western Europe’s greatest philosopher.
Andy came out of the dark portal as Aristotle and made an impassioned defense for the gadfly. He said the gadfly spoke the truth; he said the truth, indeed, is shocking to some; he said the truth refined, discarding the bad and promising the good; he said the Athenian youth were drawn to the truth as cattle were to grass, lambs to water, as they should, their inherent nature being that of light; he said that, to kill the gadfly would be to kill the Athenians’ only true friend; therefore, if execution is out of writ, you must acquit.
The court murmured, nodded, and deliberated; behind closed doors they discussed: they emerged to the polis and cried, The gadfly shall live on, his liberties secured. Athens cheered.
Well hold on a minute, let’s not be too hasty, Andy hurried. He then said the gadfly, though he told the truth, still disrupted civil society; that truths possessed relative, or pragmatic, values; that the gadfly knew that he was sowing dissent by providing alternative viewpoints against the Athenian government, and that this intention, though not inherently malicious, is naturally oppositional; that the Athenian government had the right to promote its own views, for these views encouraged social cohesion and therefore efficiency; in fact, the government should generally be in charge of education, for, being assembled of the best people in the polis, it was most capable of judging what was true and asserting strongly truth; therefore, if Athens did not now exercise its power to execute the gadfly, who sought to break up their monopoly on truth and influence on the population, they would then lose it to men worse than the gadfly, who may use their newfound influence to foment dissension and possibly war; and if public expression, the will to act as one chooses and desires, was not the first thing given up when the polis was assembled, what else could it be?
The court murmured, nodded, and deliberated; behind closed doors they discussed; they emerged to the polis and cried, The gadfly shall die, for the republic. Athens cheered.
Andy said, Man, I’m good.
Gary played the gadfly, and drank the hemlock. Crito wept; Simmias and Cebes cried; Xanthippe held her husband’s hands, as tears fell on her lap; Gary was cheery, and said the poison did not hurt at all; he spoke of the heavens; then said, Urk!, held his heart, and died. And, from his tomb, he sneaked out onto the boat, where the gadfly waited, for he too wanted to see the world.
© 2025 Jay Lee